Parks and Recreation: "Canvassing"Review

Share.

Leslie goes door to door to drum up support.

By Matt Fowler

Funnier things were definitely in store for Leslie (Amy Poehler) this week on Parks and Recreation. While "Canvassing" wasn't a true laugh riot, it did have "the disaster factor" working in its favor. Meaning that Leslie was heading into holding her first big community meeting about the park she intends to build, and it all just winds up being a widespread failure on every level. Through it all though, Leslie remains frighteningly unflappable – even grinning a bit at the end after someone referred to her as "Park Lady." Of course, the man followed that with "you suck," but that's not the part she focuses on. Or even heard.

We're also given Leslie's mega-ambition of becoming the first woman President, which sort of pushes her off into more cartoonish territory since its one thing to love your job as a workhorse city level bureaucrat, but it's a whole other ballgame to think that your accomplishments on that level will lead you to The White House. It's a little baffling, especially since most everything she touches, in typical "Office-style" lead character fashion, turns into an absolute awkward mess. Leslie, Ann (Rashida Jones), Tom (Aziz Ansari) and the rest head out into the neighborhood to take opinion polls for the park project, and to invite supporters to the public meeting. Moments like these, where Leslie gets the chance to poorly interact with the public, are the best way to go on a series like this. She even manages to turn a few people against having a park in place of a giant festering dirt pit, which is a hilarious notion when you stop and think about it.

Leslie (Amy Poehler) supplies the gang with handy guidebooks.

Tom is a strange character, but probably is also the most compelling one at this point. Yes, he's just one of many co-workers of Leslie's that thrives on her frantic misery, but he also seems to be strangely delusional and ambitious in his own right. His method of gathering support for the park consisted of "bromance" bluetoothing contactors in the area and promising them jobs. "Are you going to come to the committee meeting tomorrow or are you going to be a bitch?" is one of his tactics to fill seats with "Yay" voters. Which brings us to the committee meeting voting. Leslie has pretty much ensured a "Nay" vote on the project, and the meeting itself winds up turning into a maelstrom of misfortune, with both her successful mom (Pamela Reed) and the head City Planner watching.

I really enjoyed Leslie flat out failing so miserably on the second episode. There wasn't really even a glimmer of hope at the end of it for her, and yet she'll trudge on. In a desperate ploy, Leslie winds up filibustering her whole meeting so that the time runs out and no one can vote. She muses about the future of Pawnee when we'll all "blink our feeling to each other instead of using words." She even begins to read aloud from The Phantom Tollbooth.

Some of the other characters need to be fleshed out a bit more and made…well, funnier. Mark (Paul Schneider) is low key and an underachieving city planner, and Ron (Nick Offerman) is still her boss that resents having to do beneficial work for the community. Together they're just sort of boring and taking up space on a show that needs to have its precious moments filled with crucial funniness.